Koala is fine. Koala Bear is what they were used to be known as. Older generations know koalas as koala bears but koalas aren't bears but a different order and are marsupial.

Please also keep in mind that 181 people have been confirmed dead with the death toll expected to sharply increase.Nearly 2000 homes destroyed and 7000 people made homeless.We are being told that the gippsland fires are the worst peace-time disaster in our country's history.

A mother and her two boys were found dead in this car

Near Jeeralang

POLICE have been unable to find any trace of the bodies of some of Black Saturday's victims because the fires were so prolonged and intense.

With one academic estimating the fire temperature reached 1200 degrees, police fear they may never be able to formally identify some victims reported missing by relatives. More than 150 forensic police are continuing to painstakingly search the ruins of Marysville, north-east of Melbourne, where about 100 people are believed to have perished.

And some of the dead or missing...

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Tragic, terrible events. I sure hope the fires stop and people can re-build their lives. Thanks for the photos, Ben; a photo is worth a "1,000 words" -- a 1,000 words of metta, that is. Beautiful place, beautiful people.

Please also keep in mind that 181 people have been confirmed dead with the death toll expected to sharply increase.Nearly 2000 homes destroyed and 7000 people made homeless.We are being told that the gippsland fires are the worst peace-time disaster in our country's history.